Wandering Hands
by sri ffn
Summary: An arranged marriage of a shy girl from a small town to a quiet affluent businessman. Words are not spoken in the Raizada house, they are felt - in eyes, in gestures, in touches. An unconventional love story of wandering hands and silent gestures. An Arshi OS.


**Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, they belong to their respective owners. I own the plot, that's solely mine.**

**A/N: As always, thank you to NallyLove for being the light in my day.**

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Wandering eyes are the most common complaint that women have with men in their life. Or so I've heard. My husband never looks up from his work and routine to notice other women, so I wouldn't know. I doubt he even notices me. I've caught his eyes on me a time or two but it was so fleeting it could be a trick of my mind.

My husband, sigh, his problem is not the eyes, it's the hands. And no, they don't wander on anyone else than me. How am I so sure, you ask? Because it takes the clock to strike one a.m. before he even attempts to wander his hands towards me, and I'm the wife here of all things!

Ours was an arranged marriage; I expected some awkwardness in the early stages of our marriage. I didn't expect that awkwardness to permeate our lives in such a significant amount that it turned into suffocation.

It's been three months now – our conversations are still stilted. Granted, we never had a lot of conversations to begin with. He was always a quiet man. Aloof, I think. Our two months of courtship period was overtly formal. We exchanged an occasional message here and there regarding a ritual or a shopping date. There were no deep conversations to "get to know each other."

xoxo

Three months of marriage hasn't changed the "get to know each other" status. We don't know each other any better than we did. I know he likes to take a black coffee before sleeping. I know he sleeps with his glasses on if I don't take them off. I know he wakes up at 8 a.m. and goes for a jog before breakfast at 9:30 a.m. I know that his structured routine has only one flaw; he doesn't decide what time he sleeps.

Not surprisingly, his wandering hands have a time schedule just as everything else in his life. It doesn't matter if he's awake or sleeping, his hands will always find my skin to caress at one a.m. I'm usually asleep by midnight because my routine starts an hour before his. But these past three months, I go to sleep at ten so I can catch some sleep before his wandering hands will inevitably wake me even if I pretend to be sleeping through it.

At first they were just a brush of his skin with mine. His hands were fleeting across my bare arms. Slowly, as time has gone by, he's become bolder with his touches. One particular night, I swear I felt him brush across my nipples.

We never talk about his clandestine explorations of my body. Sometimes, I wonder if I should. Will it help him to know that I more than welcome his advances? Is it inappropriate to say such things to him directly? It's at times like these I miss having a girlfriend close by. All my close friends are in a different city or different countries. Modern communication has done wonders in reducing distances between cities but it couldn't reduce the distances between people. Especially, for someone as forgettable as I am; my own husband doesn't remember me until his routine demands him to.

It doesn't help that his erratic sleep schedule has dampened my "nightly routine." You know what I mean? Sigh, one of these days, I'm going to spontaneously combust with all this unresolved sexual tension between us.

xoxo

Something has changed. I don't know if he has changed or I have, but something between us has changed. We still don't talk. That's not right, we don't need words to talk is more accurate a description. Somehow, someday, his eyes started talking. Wandering eyes, I never thought I'll see the day where they would wander shamelessly all over me. He started with brief glances that grew more prolonged.

The first time, I noticed his intense stare when I pulled out straps of my brassiere from both sleeves and took it off without removing my tank that I wore to sleep. I didn't know he was in the room. I removed the brassiere and continued reading the book that I was lost in when I felt him around me. I looked up to see him staring at me, my hard nipples if you want to be exact.

I was so mortified, I turned crimson. I closed my book and placed it on the night stand to rush into the comforter when I observed his hidden smirk at my embarrassment. I smiled back at his smirk. That night was the first night, he broke the one a.m. routine. The moment he got into the bed, he placed his hands firmly on my waist and pulled me back to him. I could feel his breath on my neck when he went to sleep and I couldn't be happier.

Days after that were spent in conversations with his eyes and hands. He never takes his hands far and I appreciate the gentleman in him that seeks to reassure me of his proprietary. Although, I would rather live with a little less proprietary and a little more ravishing from my husband, I'm sorry if that makes me sounds like a wanton hussy. I'd give anything for him to touch me, really touch me. Sometimes, I wonder if he's testing me.

We've gotten really good at conversing with eyes and gestures. I don't know why we don't speak. Maybe it's because I'm shy. Maybe it's because I don't know what to say to him after all these months. The only time we've spoken to each other is in social functions or outside the house when we are surrounded by people who expect us to speak to each other. Surprisingly, we still manage to conduct our silent conversations in the crowd.

Time, that's what we need. Time will make us get over our reservations. I just need to hope for the best. So what if we're not the most conventional couple, so what if I don't know his favourite colour or his childhood nemesis, so what if he doesn't know my favourite season or my fondest memories. These are just semantics, right?

xoxo

I always thought our problem was words, turns out our problem was only words of the spoken kind. It seems we have no problem emailing each other. It sounds archaic, I know, why use emails when you have chat services, right? But, it suits us. It's unconventional like us. We talk like strangers on emails, like we don't know each other. Which is true in a sense, we didn't know each other at all. An error of my ways that I'm reminded of each time I am bombarded with new information on my husband.

He calls himself boring, says he's a businessman and his life starts and ends with his business. Boring, is the last thing you would call Arnav. He's a lot of things but boring isn't one of them. Knowing him, every small thing about his life, it's been the most exhilarating thing I've done in my life. His nightly hugs, his kind actions, his soft words, his impromptu forehead goodbye kisses, everything about him is making me fall for him so hard. I'm terrified to find out either way.

Dear sweet goddess, don't let it be a marital duty for him. Please, I'm too invested now. He means too much to me.

xoxo

Something isn't right. Arnav hasn't looked at me all week. I don't know what he's hiding, but I need to find out. I can feel his distress, but I don't know what's upsetting him. He's not answering my emails. Yes, plural – I was worried. I made black coffee for him; it's the drink of his choice. He was typing on his laptop furiously as if the words wouldn't get out his head fast enough. He nodded at the cup in silent thanks and continued typing, completely ignoring my presence thereafter. I didn't know how to get his attention. I didn't know how to ask him. Will he get mad if I ask him with spoken words? We haven't done a lot of spoken words.

_Fuck it! No pain, no gain._

"Arnav?" I touched his arm. He stopped typing.

"Hmmm?"

"You okay?" I squeezed his arm.

He looked at me and I didn't need or want any explanation anymore. Words said a lot these past weeks but not as much as Arnav Raizada's eyes said in these few seconds. I put my arms around him and hugged him tight. His touch, the way he held me tight told me all that needed to know about how bad his day had gone by. I pulled him to the bed and for the first time, I slept all night on his chest.

xoxo

That night we made an unwritten rule, emails will not take away our intimacy. They won't take away our silent conversations. We learnt that words are just as important as gestures because the next day, Arnav told me all about the stress at work that he was going through this past week in spoken words. They were considering relocating the headquarters to a new city, a new country. Arnav was stressing because he was worried how this shift will affect my life.

The dams of forced silence were now broken. I told him how I felt about my life in this city. Arnav and I decided to shift to a new house, a new life. We decided to start life afresh, a life with hopefully lesser insecurities on both parts. We decided to give spoken words a chance. Words that Arnav doesn't use often because he believes spoken words cause more misunderstandings than silences.

But we still have one place where silence rules along with wandering hands, our bed. Turns out, I have a similar problem of wandering hands that I developed after spooning with Arnav for the longest time. Every morning, Arnav's hands are on my breasts with my hands on top of his. Jury is out as to who is responsible for the daily hand displacement. Arnav swears I do it every night. I, of course, deny it vehemently.

Remember how I wanted to be ravished by my husband? Turns out, "Gentleman" is just a facade he uses to fool impressionable girls like me. My husband is no gentleman. He bites. He leaves marks on my neck that I find so hard to hide. He leaves beard rashes around my collar bone. And god, if he's in a good mood, my ass is sore. And nope, I'm not complaining one bit.

xoxo

Wandering hands and silent conversations have now been deemed as "our thing." Unconventional yes, but well, Khushi Raizada has never been known to be conventional.

xoxo

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**I hope you guys enjoyed it! Please leave a review if you can, thanks.**

**All my love**

**-sri**


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